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that these dialects are many, and that they differ, more or less, from Italian, but generally in a much greater degree than the common speech in the various counties of England differs from grammatical English. These dialects are not merely confined to rustics; they are spoken in the towns as well as in the country districts, they are, in fact, the language of childhood of all classes of persons-they continue to be, throughout life, the familiar language of most people, and the exclusive one of the lower orders. These dialects are not corruptions of the Italian, but are languages cognate with the latter, if not anterior to it, they are derived from the Latin dialects which were spoken in the provinces of Italy remoter from Rome. The familiar language of the various populations of Cisalpine Gaul, of the Veneti, and of the Ligurians, under the Roman empire, was not only not the same as that in which Cicero wrote, but must have differed, likewise, from the familiar language spoken at Rome and in Latium. Each province retained part of its original idiom, whatever it might be, mixed up with that of the conquerors, the latter disfigured of course by solecisms and vulgarisms of pronunciation as it was in Rome itself*. The influx of the northern tribes who overthrew the Roman empire effected the total corruption of the spoken Latin all over Italy;-articles and auxiliaries were introduced, terminations were altered or neglected,-in short, the whole appearance of the language was changed. The

Plays were acted in Rome in Strabo's time in the Oscan language, which still remained at that day, though the national existence of the Osci or Volsci had been extinguished-Strabo. Casaub., p. 233. The Etruscan language also was still in use in the time of the early Cæsars.

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change was, of course, greatest wherever the invaders made the longest stay and formed a permanent settlement, as was the case in Lombardy. Various dialects resulted from these various combinations, which were known by the general name of Roman, Romanic, or Romance language, like those of southern France.

The dialects spoken in central Italy retained a greater affinity to one another, as well as to their Latin parent. If we look at the old chronicles of the thirteenth century, written in humble, familiar style, whether at Naples, Rome, Bologna, Rimini, or Tuscany, we see a great similarity in the etymology and syntax in all. The familiar language of Tuscany, however, seems to have attained, sooner than those of its neighbours, a high degree of polish; probably it had never been so corrupt as the rest, owing to the local position of Tuscany, which prevented its being permanently occupied or colonized by the northern tribes, and also from the early independence of the Tuscan cities, their extensive trade, their wealth and civilization. In other parts of Italy, the few men of education and learning used also a language more refined than the generality of the people; and thus the early versifiers, including princes and courtiers, Frederic II. and his chancellor Pietro delle Vigne at Naples, Guido Guinicelli and Fra Guidotto of Bologna, Guido delle Colonne, a Sicilian; Can della Scala at Verona; Guido da Polenta, Prince of Ravenna, wrote in a language little different from that of the Tuscan poets and writers of the same age. But Tuscany had this advantage over the rest, that its familiar spoken language was more generally polished, so as to resemble the poetical and select language of the other Italians. And this superiority was carried still

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farther in the following or fourteenth century, by the authority and example of a host of Tuscan writers, such as Dante, Dino Compagni, Cino da Pistoja, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sacchetti, Villani, Passavanti, Pandolfini, who at once stamped the vulgar language, as it was then called, with the mark of Tuscan spirit and idiom.

While the oral Tuscan was thus becoming more closely connected with the written language, that of the other parts of Italy remained either stationary, as was the case at Naples, or degenerated still further, as at Bologna, and other parts of northern Italy. The people of central Italy, however, continued to understand one another; and the spoken dialects of Tuscany, Umbria, Rome, and even of part of Campania and of the Abruzzi, never varied so much from each other as those north of the Apennines. And as civilization and information spread, all the educated people of central Italy came to speak the grammatical Italian as their native language the vulgarisms of pronunciation remaining confined more and more to the illiterate, who also in some degree improved their language from the example of their betters; and thus, in Tuscany and the western Roman states, one common language is now spoken, intelligible to all the inhabitants. From the gulf of La Spezia to Terracina, nay, as far south as the Liris, and to the north as far as the central ridge of the Apennines, we have found one common language spoken and understood by all, though varying in particular districts, especially among the rural populations, by shades of pronunciation and accent, and by idioms, as is the case with the language of every country. This language is the oral Italian, bearing the same analogy to the Italian we read in the works of authors as the oral English

spoken in the various towns of England bears to the written English. The spoken Italian extends into the Abruzzi, especially in the province of Aquila and near the lake of Celano; it is also the language of the towns in the marches of Ancona, Macerata, and Fermo, as far as the Adriatic. But the rural population of these latter districts speak a sort of dialect.

Beyond the boundaries we have mentioned, north of the Apennines of Tuscany, the oral language of all classes becomes quite unintelligible to a native of central Italy, who is not always able to make himself understood, especially by the country people. The principal dialects are those of Piedmont, Genoa, Milan, Brescia, Mantua, Venice, Friuli, Ferrara, Modena, Bologna, and Romagna. Each of these states has a dialect unintelligible to the natives of most of the others, and each dialect is, in fact, a separate language, varying as to the pronunciation of town and country people, educated and uneducated, like every other language in Europe. Thus the people of Padua and Verona do not speak always exactly like those of Venice, although they all speak a common dialect, the Venetian; they all understand each other; while the people of Bergamo, Brescia, and Mantua do not understand Venetian, nor does a Venetian understand them, when each speaks his respective dialect. Most of the dialects have their own grammar and dictionary, and all of them can boast of writers, chiefly poets, many of whom excel, especially in humorous composition. At Venice, until the fall of the republic, the Venetian dialect was the language of the senate, of the bar, of the pulpit, of business of every sort. At Turin, Piedmontese was spoken by the late king Victor Emmanuel in preference to Italian or French,

which latter was then the court language. Popular plays are written and performed at Milan, Turin, and Venice, in the respective dialects, and popular preachers resort to the dialects, especially in addressing a rural audience. The same may be said of southern Italy, where the dialects of Naples, Puglia, Calabria, and Sicily prevail-with this difference however, that it is somewhat easier for a person acquainted with grammatical Italian to understand Neapolitan than Piedmontese or Milanese, because, as we have observed, the Neapolitan dialect bore originally a greater analogy to the Roman and Tuscan, and the other dialects of central Italy; and it now even bears, in point of etymology, a closer affinity to Latin than the written Italian or Tuscan. Neapolitan was the language of government under the Aragonese dynasty, and Ferdinand, the late king of Naples, talked broad Neapolitan.

After all we have said, we shall perhaps be asked, how can the written Italian of Dante, Ariosto, and Tasso be called the language of Italy? We will explain. Because it is everywhere the written language of the country, the exclusive language of epistolary correspondence, that of all refined society; it is note, with out exception, the language of every Italian government, the language of administration, of all public acts, of the schools, the colleges, the pulpit, the bar, and of the stage, with the exception of popular farces, which are in some particular dialect. All educated men speak Italian, they learn it from their parents and teachers; all who are not totally illiterate understand it, at least for common purposes; all who can read and write, read and write Italian, for this is the only language of public and private instruction. There is, therefore, one com

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